China's SMR Program: How Far Ahead Are They Really?
While the West debates timelines and costs, China is already flipping switches.
Here is a number worth sitting with for a moment: 10 to 15 years. That is the gap analysts at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation estimate separates China from the United States when it comes to deploying fourth-generation nuclear reactors at commercial scale. Not designing them, not licensing them — actually building and operating them. If you work in the SMR space, that number should feel bracing, because it is not a projection. It is, increasingly, a description of reality.
By the first half of 2026, China is expected to bring online the Linglong One — also known as the ACP100 — making it the world’s first commercial land-based small modular reactor. 🌏 Meanwhile, America’s most prominent SMR project, NuScale’s UAMPS plant in Idaho, was cancelled in 2023 before a single shovel of dirt was moved. The contrast is not subtle. It is a floodlight pointed directly at a structural problem in Western nuclear development.
This article is not about dunking on the West for sport. It is about understanding, honestly, what China has actually built, how they built it so fast, and what the lead means — or doesn’t mean — for the global SMR race going forward.
What China has already put on the grid
Before the Linglong One even starts up, China can already claim something no other country can: two distinct SMR-class reactor technologies in commercial operation.
The first is the HTR-PM — the High Temperature Gas-Cooled Reactor Pebble-bed Module — at the Shidaowan site in Shandong province. This is a Generation IV design, and it has been commercially operational since December 2023. Two 250 MWt helium-cooled reactors drive a single 210 MWe steam turbine, and the fuel is famously peculiar: more than 400,000 graphite-coated “pebbles” the size of tennis balls, each containing roughly 7 grams of enriched uranium. 🔬
What makes the HTR-PM genuinely remarkable is not just its operation — it’s what it proved. In tests published in the journal Joule in 2024, Tsinghua University researchers shut off external power entirely when the plant was running at full capacity and tracked what happened. The answer: the reactor cooled itself down over two days without any human intervention and without emergency cooling systems. That is inherent safety at commercial scale, demonstrated for the first time in history. Not simulated. Not modeled. Done.
Key facts about the HTR-PM worth knowing:
Two reactor modules, each 250 MWt, driving one shared turbine
Helium coolant, graphite moderator — no water in the primary circuit
TRISO fuel pebbles retain radioactivity even at temperatures up to 1,620°C
Entered commercial operation December 2023, the first Gen IV plant in the world to do so
An upgraded version, the HTR-PM600, is planned with six modules and a 650 MWe turbine
Does it face challenges? Absolutely. The specialized fuel supply chain is still thin, and the economics of helium-cooled systems are not trivial. But the physics has been validated at scale. That matters.
Linglong One: the SMR the whole world is watching 🏗️
The second entry is the one getting most of the international attention. The Linglong One — developed by the China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC) over more than a decade of independent research — is a 125 MWe integrated pressurized water reactor under construction at the Changjiang Nuclear Power Base on Hainan Island.
First concrete was poured on July 13, 2021. The outer containment dome was hoisted into place in February 2025. Cold functional tests — the critical pre-fuel-loading verification that all primary circuit components are sealed and performing correctly — were completed on October 16, 2025. A non-nuclear turbine run test was completed on December 23, 2025. Commercial operation is now targeted for the first half of 2026.
That is a 58-month construction timeline from first concrete to commercial operation. No Western SMR project has come close to that execution speed — many haven’t broken ground at all.
The Linglong One’s stats, in plain terms:
125 MWe electrical output per unit
Can generate 1 billion kWh annually, enough for roughly 526,000 households
Designed for cogeneration: electricity, district heating, steam supply, and seawater desalination 💧
60-year operational life, with a two-year refueling cycle
Reduces CO₂ emissions by approximately 880,000 tonnes per year
The first SMR in the world to pass an IAEA general safety review, back in 2016
One detail that deserves more attention than it typically gets: CNNC has stated that the Linglong One relies on a fully domestic industrial supply chain, with no significant dependence on foreign suppliers. That is a degree of manufacturing independence that most Western SMR developers can only aspire to, given how fragmented nuclear supply chains outside of China have become.
Does 2026 seem ambitious? The original target was end of 2025, and it slipped by about six months. But the tests have been completed on sequence, and the Nuclear Energy Agency’s SMR Dashboard now lists the project as “under construction, commissioning 2026.” At this point, the project execution risk is substantially reduced. What’s left is largely operational, not structural.
What do you think — does a six-month slip on the world’s first commercial SMR concern you, or is that basically on-time by nuclear standards? Drop a comment below. 👇
How China built this machine: the structural advantages
It would be tempting to write China’s lead off as purely a product of authoritarian speed — just decree things and they happen. The reality is considerably more nuanced, and understanding it matters if you want to know whether the lead is replicable.
According to analysis from the Breakthrough Institute, China’s nuclear success rests on three structural pillars:
Industrial supply chain depth. China has built 30+ nuclear plants since 2000, creating a mature, high-volume domestic supply base for reactor components. The workforce knows what it’s doing. Parts arrive on time because the factories making them have been optimized over dozens of builds.
Top-down policy commitment. Every nuclear plant in China is included in the “national strategy” before it ever enters the licensing pipeline. There is no equivalent of the U.S. system where a private developer must obtain NRC approval before any serious planning can happen, then wait for state utility commissions to act before construction begins.
Learning-by-doing at scale. China intentionally builds multiple units of the same design in sequence, improving each time. The Hualong One (HPR-1000) has been refined over ten domestic builds. That kind of iterative improvement compresses costs and timelines in ways that one-off projects structurally cannot.
Some of these advantages are not exportable. Direct public financing of reactors and low construction labor costs are features of China’s political economy, not adjustable policy levers for democracies. But others — predictable licensing pathways, co-ordination between regulators and developers, and a serious commitment to modular construction practices — are learnable. The Breakthrough Institute’s Seaver Wang has argued China’s licensing process, while faster partly because it is state-directed, also benefits from formal structures that reduce ambiguity for developers in ways that could be adapted elsewhere.
The U.S. currently has 35 GWe of nuclear capacity under construction in China — more than the rest of the world combined — while America’s Vogtle Units 3 and 4 became cautionary tales of cost overruns and multi-year delays. That divergence is not a natural law. It is the product of decades of different choices.
The export question: who does China sell to next? 🌍
Here is where the stakes get genuinely geopolitical. China is not just building SMRs for its own grid. CNNC is actively marketing the ACP100 internationally, with reported discussions involving Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, and Saudi Arabia under the Belt and Road Initiative framework.
Why does this matter beyond nuclear energy? Because whoever sells a country its first reactor also sells it fuel, maintenance contracts, engineering training, regulatory expertise, and in some cases, the safety culture that shapes a nation’s nuclear industry for generations. A nuclear export is not a one-time sale. It is a 40-to-60-year relationship. ⚡
The West understands this calculus, which is why the U.S.-UK Atlantic Partnership for Advanced Nuclear Energy, signed in September 2025, includes commitments to coordinate safety assessments and accelerate SMR deployment, partly as a response to Chinese and Russian export momentum. The UK announced a £2.5 billion package to speed SMR deployment targeting the mid-2030s. The Trump administration unveiled an executive order in May 2025 targeting 400 GW of nuclear capacity by 2050, with SMRs at the center.
These are real commitments. But there is a timeline problem:
Rolls-Royce SMR: targeting mid-2030s for first UK deployment
GE-Hitachi BWRX-300: 2030 target for first unit in Canada
X-energy Xe-100: demonstration in Texas, still years from commercial operation
NuScale: design certified, but the only major customer withdrew; no construction underway
By the time any of these projects reach commercial operation, the Linglong One will have been running for nearly a decade. China will have accumulated operational data, iterated on costs, and locked in relationships with early adopter nations. That is a compounding advantage, not a static one.
What would genuinely close this gap? Not just money and executive orders — those help — but a serious industrial commitment to building the supply chains, training the workforce, and accepting that some degree of modular standardization requires choosing a design and sticking with it, rather than supporting 20 competing concepts simultaneously.
The honest limitations in China’s lead 🔬
Fairness demands acknowledging what China’s program is not.
The Linglong One, at 125 MWe, is a demonstration project, not yet a production line. The economics of subsequent units — the all-important “Nth-of-a-kind” cost — remain to be seen at scale. CNNC has spoken about modular manufacturing and assembly-line production, and the construction methodology genuinely supports this vision, but it hasn’t been proven across multiple units yet.
The HTR-PM, while operationally impressive, has faced questions about capacity factor performance and the economics of its specialized fuel. Helium-cooled systems are excellent physics; they are harder supply chains.
There is also the data transparency question. China’s nuclear program operates under state ownership and with limited independent external audit. Performance data from the HTR-PM, for example, is reported by operators with commercial and geopolitical interests in positive framing. That is not a reason to dismiss the achievements — the IAEA reviews and the published Joule research carry real credibility — but it is a reason to read China’s own press releases with appropriate skepticism.
And internationally, the financing structures China offers through the Belt and Road — low-interest loans, turnkey construction — come with geopolitical strings that some nations are increasingly wary of. Sri Lanka’s experience with Chinese infrastructure debt has not been forgotten in Southeast Asia. Whether that hesitancy shapes SMR purchasing decisions remains an open question.
The SMR market, according to research published in 2025, was valued at $159.4 million in 2024 and is projected to reach $5.17 billion by 2035 at a compound annual growth rate of 42.31%. That is a market where first-mover credibility matters enormously. China has it right now. Whether it holds it depends partly on whether the Linglong One performs as designed, and partly on whether Western programs can compress their timelines before the export landscape solidifies.
So here is the question worth sitting with: if China’s Linglong One performs flawlessly through 2026 and 2027, and CNNC signs its first export deal by 2028, what exactly is the Western response — and is anyone preparing it seriously enough? That answer will determine whether the 10-to-15-year gap closes, widens, or simply becomes the permanent shape of the global nuclear order.